Does Subjectivism Give Us More Moral Responsibility or Less?

A brief overview of both sides of the argument

Photo by Tingey Injury Law Firm on Unsplash

According to subjectivism, there is no such thing as objective moral truths. Whereas objectivism may posit that, for example, ‘murder is wrong’ and is so in all cases and possible situations, subjectivism believes that such statements cannot be universally true as there are no objective moral facts.

Subjectivism claims that moral statements merely describe how a person feels about a particular issue, making them merely factual statements about speaker attitudes. If someone says that ‘lying is wrong’, this is therefore not considered a universal truth but simply an indication that the person uttering the sentence disapproves of lying. Any moral judgments, therefore, depend entirely on the feelings and attitudes of the persons debating the issues at hand.

Subjectivism can by its very nature account for differing and contradictory moral views of different people. These moral judgments always reflect personal approval or disapproval of actions and are very much part of everyday life. We either applaud or criticize actions and decisions, and we approve of others making choices we agree with and disapprove of others making choices we disagree with. It may even be argued that we try to persuade others of our own points of view. When we say something is wrong, we don’t just communicate how we feel about the issue but also imply that we disapprove of this action and therefore of others committing it.

Further, subjectivism means that things become good or bad simply because we say they are, for if we personally approve of something, this means it must be good. Having no deity or divine commandment telling us what is good or not means we are ourselves responsible for deciding which actions are good and moral or bad and immoral. We become an infallible judge of morality.

In my opinion, this gives us much more freedom and responsibility than simply adhering to some divine commands. If a deity tells us what is good or bad, we simply relinquish all responsibility and blindly follow something that has been decided for us. This means less freedom, as we are constrained by the preset divine commands and cannot be blamed for anything we do in accordance with these divine commands, for example. We can only act within a certain framework that has been decided for us — unless of course we willingly act against it and accept the associated punishment that comes with it.

Having to decide for ourselves whether actions are good or bad, moral or immoral, means we have to make choices and consider the possible outcomes or consequences. This makes for a richer life with more direct experiences rather than just following a set of rules that have been given to us. It also means we need to consider the impact of our actions on other people and on society as a whole. We can choose to be selfish and a ‘bad’ person or we can choose to be a ‘good’ person and make decisions with the well-being of others or society in mind. Again, this involves a significant amount of freedom.

Freedom of choice

Subjectivism also requires us to continually make decisions again and again on a daily basis. We cannot just sit back and rely on a rulebook we were given by some authority. Of course, this also comes with more moral responsibility, as our decisions not only affect ourselves and we need to reflect not only on how they impact others but also on how they will make others see us and our position in life and on society. Some people will probably be driven by the desire to be seen as ‘good’ by others, so they will choose to make moral decisions. Other people might not be concerned with how others view them and thus consider things ‘good’ that benefit them personally, such as theft. As they acted in line with their own beliefs and the action benefited themselves, this cannot be condemned according to subjectivism.

This demonstrates that subjectivism comes with an immense degree of freedom and thus moral responsibility to make ‘good’ choices and decisions. This freedom is definitely greater than the freedom we would have if we were simply following a set of rules give not us by an external authority or deity, in which case we simply do things because we are told they are the right thing to do, not because we personally reflected on them and came to the conclusion that they are moral.

Photo by prottoy hassan on Unsplash

Counterarguments

The strongest argument against the position that subjectivism gives us greater responsibility is that if moral truths are always subjective, they can never be wrong and whatever we decide to do is ‘good’ because we deem it so. As a consequence, no one could ever be blamed for any actions or be considered morally culpable. This means there is really no freedom at all as such because no choice can ever be wrong, so there is no freedom to make a right or wrong choice. After all, all actions are performed in accordance with each individual’s belief system and therefore ‘good’ and moral.

So if someone believes murder is perfectly acceptable and they kill someone, for example, we could not morally condemn them, because they acted in accordance with their own belief system and thus did an acceptable or even good deed by their own standards. The only way to condemn someone for murder in this scenario would be if the majority of people in society take an opposing view and stipulate that murder is wrong, but then the ultimate judgment is no longer subjective but based on the majority view, taking away individual responsibility and freedom.

In conclusion, the question of whether subjectivism gives us more or less personal freedom is evidently not clear-cut.

Does Knowledge of the Future Rule Out Free Will?